


binary stars

by mutterandmumble



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Family Headcanons, Fluff, Gen, Humor, Meeting the Family, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, of making fools of yourselves in a public place, the universal bonding experience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24906475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: In which Akaashi does not know how to talk to children, Bokuto laughs a lot, and the scariest Bokuto family member is two years old
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 14
Kudos: 137





	binary stars

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t think I’ve ever written a toddler before. It was fun though because they’re little and loud and energetic and a lot to describe and I like describing things. The part of my brain that makes the Good Words decided to up and take a break on me anyways, so I figured I’d try my hand at stuff with more character interaction and dialogue until that started itself up again, and this felt like a good opportunity
> 
> Anyways, I hope you enjoy!!

The very first thing that Bokuto says when Akaashi meets him at the front of the school that afternoon is “There's been a change of plans.”

He’s speaking very fast and low, frantic and imploring and with the sort of brow-scrunched, eyes-bulging, mouth-wide-open horror that Akaashi usually associates with pop quizzes or cancelled practices or Monday morning tutoring. Akaashi would be concerned, but as every other day brings about some new disaster- whether it’s a change of plans or the loss of yet another piece of gear or the vending machine running out of  _ the good chips Keiji, the good chips _ \- he can’t bring himself to be anything other than exasperated. And hopelessly, wildly fond, but that’s beside the point because Bokuto’s still talking and he's talking fast, and Akaashi’s got to stop the oncoming rant if they’d ever like to be able to get anything done again.

“Koutarou,” he says, cranking the coolness in his voice up an approximate seventy-six percent and looking right into Bokuto’s eyes. He holds his gaze in the unflinching, unwavering way that he usually saves for matches or people who walk too slowly in the halls, a tactic that’s much meaner than he would usually employ but it’ll get the job done. “Koutarou. Slow down please.”

Bokuto’s tirade stops near immediately, as it should. Akaashi’s got this particular situation down to a science; it’s one he’s familiar with himself.

“Right,” Bokuto hums. “Right, right, right.” He takes a deep breath in. He breathes out in one big  _ woosh  _ then nods, clapping his hands together and giving one of those shudders he likes when he’s trying to get his thoughts in order. Akaashi waits for the allotted thirty seconds- any longer and they risk slipping right back into dangerous territory- and then he speaks, careful still but that’s more out of preference than any real necessity.

“Good?” he asks, still keeping his voice flat and his shoulders straight, as unaffected as can be because anything else may be misinterpreted or otherwise misunderstood, and they’ve got things to be doing. Things that he doesn’t know- because there’s been a change of plans, apparently- but things nonetheless. 

“Good,” Bokuto replies. It’s very definite, punctuated with a nod. 

Good.

“So there’s been a change of plans? Did something happen?”   
  


“Ah, nothing bad,” Bokuto says, waving a hand and with no signs of his earlier urgency. Odd, but not worrying because that’s just how Bokuto is, and Akaashi  _ really  _ likes Bokuto so he can’t bring himself to mind. “Or at least I don’t think.”

Akaashi furrows his brow. That is very ambiguous, and he doesn’t like things that are ambiguous- he can’t plan for them, and not being able to plan for things isn't something that he’s planned for yet so it’s not allowed to happen. 

“What do you mean?”

“Welll,” Bokuto drawls, looking sheepish. He rubs his hand over the back of his neck, fiddles with the keychain on his backpack. He’s rocking on the balls of his feet which would normally be very cute, but right now Akaashi is getting more suspicious by the second so he can’t spare a thought on how good Bokuto looks in the afternoon sunlight or how attractive he is when he chews on his bottom lip or even how outright  _ hot  _ it is when-

“How do you feel about kids?”

Akaashi chokes on his own spit. 

“We’ve only been dating for three months,” he sputters. His tongue feels too big for his mouth and his heart is thump-thump-thumping in his chest, and wow is it hot out here or _what_ , do you think it’ll rain tonight like it’s supposed to? There’s an eighty-five percent chance and Akaashi brought an umbrella just in case. He has an extra too because at least one of his classmates always fails to check the weather and he’s not so cruel so as to leave them to brave the elements alone, not when he’s so able to do something about it, and isn’t that something? He’s not sure what exactly, but it’s _something,_ isn’t it? Isn’t it?

“What?” Bokuto asks, and his eyes are narrowed and he looks confused for a moment before something clicks and he cycles through thirty different facial expressions before bursting into very loud, enthusiastic laughter. “Oh my god- Keiji- oh god, Keiji,  _ no.  _ No, there’s been a change of plans because we’ve gotta stop at my little sister’s daycare to pick her up, not because- I- because you-”

He can’t even finish. He keeps on laughing and Akaashi’s stomach sinks because there’s no way that this story’s not getting back to Kuroo and Kuroo is never going to let him hear the end of it. Akaashi is going to have to move to Switzerland. Akaashi is going to have to herd goats. Akaashi had such a bright future ahead of him, but Akaashi tragically dropped dead from embarrassment outside the school gates at the ripe old age of sixteen because his boyfriend wouldn’t stop  _ laughing  _ at him. 

“Alright,” he grumbles, and then again, louder when Bokuto doesn’t let up. “Alright! Alright! So we have to pick up your little sister? When? Now?”

“Yeah, yeah Keiji,” Bokuto gasps, and are those _tears_? “Yeah, we’re picking her up before we go to my house. That's why I was asking about kids, ‘cause you’ve never met my little sister and I know that you don’t have any younger siblings or anything but that doesn’t mean that a person can’t be good with kids, right? So I was just curious, but then _you_ thought that I wa-”

“ _ Don’t. _ ” 

Akaashi is going to sink straight into the ground. Akaashi is never going to be seen again. Akaashi is going to run off and join the circus because he’s already halfway to being a clown and he believes in strategic career planning.

“Awww, don’t be like that.” Bokuto pouts and tugs at his bag, ducking his head down and looking up through his eyelashes in a move that would be much more effective if he weren’t a) a few centimeters taller than Akaashi, and b) still glassy-eyed from his laughing fit. “We’ve still gotta walk together and I don’t wanna have to do the angry-walk thing where you try to walk faster than me and I have to let you even though you don’t know where we’re going.”

Akaashi does _not_ do that. Now he’s going to give in, but it’ll be for unrelated reasons like salvaging the remnants of his pride and not because he doesn’t know for the life of him where Bokuto’s sister’s daycare could be.

“I don’t do that,” he says. He doesn’t  _ do  _ that, he just walks fast sometimes is all, and maybe he walks a  _ little _ faster when he feels any emotion stronger than neutral contentment but that doesn’t mean that he does an  _ angry-walk thing _ . “But I think that we should both forget this conversation ever happened anyways and just go get your little sister.”

“Sure, babe,” Bokuto replies. He nods. Akaashi nods. There is a brief respite in the form of an unspoken agreement to  _ stop talking about it,  _ and then that brief respite is immediately undermined when Bokuto decides to tack on a  _ for now  _ in the form of an unfortunate wriggle of his eyebrows.

“We are  _ leaving _ ,” Akaashi says. Then he turns on his heel and walks right out of the gates, leaving Bokuto laughing behind him. He does catch up quick, because Bokuto is tall and seems to have a personal vendetta against moving at anything less that a half-sprint, and that’s probably a good thing because try as he might Akaashi did not magically figure out the way to the daycare within the ten steps that he took before Bokuto began to follow. There are a few moments where Bokuto hesitantly follows behind him then, a very unsubtle and extremely endearing attempt at testing the waters, and it takes ten more steps before he reaches out and grabs Akaash’s hand. From there everything eases back on into familiar territory even as Bokuto leads him down a number of unfamiliar roads, running his thumb over the back of their hands in one of his mindless, idle movements that Akaashi likes so much, and Akaashi supposes that he can forgive him for now.

They don’t talk much on the walk over because Bokuto is content to swing their hands and hum and Akaashi is busy burning with curiosity about what Bokuto’s little sister is actually going to be  like. Will she and Bokuto look alike? Will they act alike? Will they  _ be  _ alike? Akaashi hasn’t met any of Bokuto’s younger siblings. He’s seen glimpses of the older ones and was introduced to his stepfather once in passing, but according to Bokuto when the younger siblings come home things get  _ loud  _ and they both know that Akaashi saves all his tolerance for  _ loud  _ for school hallways and volleyball practice and things like that. After a long day he’s never very good at dealing with much  _ loud _ at all _ ,  _ so they stick to quiet places like Akaashi’s house for sleepovers or more long-term visits and go to Bokuto’s for study sessions or more casual hangouts. They’ve got a system, and like any good system it works so long as it’s kept to, so he hasn’t met any of the three younger-than-six siblings that Bokuto’s got. 

He’ll admit to being worried too, because  _ little sisters  _ aren’t exactly rowdy volleyball teammates or nosy classmates, and while he knows how to deal with those he doesn’t have a set blueprint for interacting with  _ little sisters.  _ When it comes to talking with people he hasn’t spoken to before his usual approach is to mirror their mannerisms, but Bokuto’s little sister is two. What’s he supposed to do? Babble at her? Talk about the weather? At what age do people start using the weather as small talk? Akaashi has no experience with children at all because Akaashi has one sibling, and that sibling is an older brother, and that older brother has been away at college for three years now. The rest of Akaashi’s family consists of his mother- who he loves very much- and on occasion the woman next door, who his mother has been holding a quiet, steady flirtation with for six months now. He’s always been the baby of his family, and as he's the baby of his family he doesn’t know how to deal with- well,  _ babies. _

Which is something that he’s going to have to fix fast because at some point during his musings, they’ve arrived at the daycare. It’s a pleasant square-shaped building on the corner that looks just like Akaashi thought a daycare would, with flowers growing in great big bunches outside the doors and cars packed tight into the parking lot and trees lined all up and down the sidewalk. The whole place is very green and lively but not half as loud as Akaashi thought it would be; he can actually hear himself think, which is quite a shame because Akaashi’s head is currently gorging itself on a series of increasingly elaborate descriptions regarding just  _ how  _ he’s going to screw this up. Bokuto leaves him with a kiss on the cheek and a  _ be right back,  _ and then he disappears into the overly polished doors (why are they so shiny?), leaving Akaashi to have part three of his crisis in relative privacy.

It’s a short-lived crisis. Before he can  _ really  _ get into the good stuff- proper self-recrimination requires at least five minutes of buildup- Bokuto is back, and he’s got a bright purple backpack slung over his back and a stuffed unicorn tucked under his arm and his little sister toddling along at his side. They stop in front of Akaashi, right there on the sidewalk, and the little hysterical part of his brain (that is really more like the  _ big  _ hysterical part of his brain if he’s being honest) informs that he’s probably going to die here, right outside of the tastefully decorated daycare. They have some of the children’s art in the windows; red, yellow, orange finger-painted leaves. The parents probably love that. Akaashi is glad at least someone around here is having fun.

It’s not him, because Bokuto’s little sister is  _ right there  _ now, no longer an abstract concept floating around in the back of his mind but instead a solid, living-breathing human being and all the more terrifying for it. She has the same bright gold-brown eyes as Bokuto but she’s small and her head’s small- though still too big for her body in the rounded, swollen way that toddler’s heads are- so they look much bigger on her, all the more wide and unblinking. Her hair is black and done up in two sprigs on either side of her head, bristly pigtails tied off at the base with two pink plastic balls that are attached to pink elastic hair ties, and she’s wearing a shirt that’s light green and emblazoned with a fading owl graphic and the words  _ Too Cute to Hoot!  _ in an eye-searing shade of orange. She’s holding onto Bokuto with one hand, chubby fingers curled in a white-knuckled death grip around two of his own, and the other is shoved in her mouth where she seems intent on getting as much slobber on it as she can in as short a time as possible. 

“This is Kanae!” Bokuto tells him. The unicorn under his arm wilts, dead-eyed. Kanae looks at Akaashi like he’s something on the bottom of her limited edition, light-up Skechers. A bird somewhere fails to read the mood and starts chirping something upbeat, and Akaashi still does not know how to talk to children so he looks right back at Kanae and says nothing at all.

“Right,” Bokuto says after thirty seconds of this. “Right. Kanae, this is Keiji! Can you say hi to Keiji?”

“Hi Keiji,” Kanae drones. Her voice is garbled and loud, thick with all the warbles and wobbles and awkward drawls of a toddler still learning how to speak. She also sounds excruciatingly  _ bored  _ but in her defense Akaashi never paid attention to any of the random people his older brother had tried to introduce him to either. But Bokuto seems to think that Kanae’s complete indifference towards him is a good start because he gives a strange little squeak of encouragement and gestures frantically at Akaashi, waving his hand and jerking his head towards Kanae and moving his eyebrows up and down and up and down. Keiji recognizes the expression, unfortunately; it’s the  _ go, go talk to them  _ one he uses when Akaashi is struck with the rare and inadvisable urge to try and make friends with someone outside of his usual social circle. And Akaashi’s not stupid (and he’s used to that look, he’s not exactly the best when it comes to  _ talking to people _ ), and Bokuto’s never really been one for subtlety or dancing around things anyways, so Akaashi hears him loud and clear: talk to her. She’s two, Keiji, she’s not scary,  _ talk to her. _

“Hello, Kanae,” Akaashi starts and then freezes because he’s not sure what exactly the proper form of address is here. “Kanae… san? Hello, Kanae-san.”

Kanae is looking at him again, and she’s looking unimpressed. Bokuto is laughing again, and he’s laughing at  _ him.  _ That’s twice in one day and also betrayal of the highest order, so Akaashi  _ will  _ be withholding his mother’s world-famous snickerdoodles the next time she gives him some to “share _.” _

“Dude. Babe,” Bokuto says. “She’s two. She doesn’t care about formalities. She just wants you to look at her sneakers or say that her hair ties are cool or something. Maybe stick to the sneakers because they  _ are  _ cool. I picked them out.”

Akaashi feels his face heat up. Her sneakers  _ are _ very cool. He’d always wanted a pair of light-up sneakers as a kid, an unfulfilled dream that has been festering in the back of his mind for years and is apparently choosing now to manifest in full. God, he’s jealous of those sneakers. He would have been the coolest kid on the playground with a pair of those.

“So I should just call her Kanae, then?” he asks, shaking his head. The less time spent dwelling on the shattered dreams of his five-year-old self the better.   


Bokuto nods. Because Bokuto’s movements all tend to be full-body in one way or another, the unicorn under his arm nods too. He’s still snickering. Akaashi does not look at him (if he can’t see it it doesn’t exist) and instead focuses again on Kanae; he’s got this, she’s  _ two _ , he will  _ not _ be scared of the two year old, no matter how small and loud and intimidating she may be, he will  _ not _ .

“Kanae,” Akaashi tries. Kanae looks at him with her big, scary eyes and he snaps back to Bokuto, who gives him two thumbs up, a big smile, and yet another nod of encouragement. “I like your shoes.”

Kanae keeps on staring. She does not say a word.

“Go on,” Bokuto coaxes. “What do we say?”

“Thank you,” Kanae says, route and dry like she’s reading from a script. She scuffs at the sidewalk, holding tighter to Bokuto’s hand as a family passes them by- a mother and her son. They get into a car that’s a sharp silver and drive off with little preamble, just a rumble and a puff of exhaust and then they’re speeding down the road until they turn a corner and there’s nothing left of them. Akaashi traces their path with his eyes and stays right where he is. It could be worse, he reminds himself- but it could be better too, if he could figure out how to  _ make  _ it better, which is generally how things go with him. If past experiences are any indication, the solution will come to him later tonight when everything’s already through and he’s been agonizing over what he could have done differently for three hours straight.

Figures. 

So goes his current predicament. His current very  _ small,  _ very  _ judgy-looking  _ predicament, which as of ten seconds ago has started wiping slobber-covered fingers all over the side of his boyfriend’s shirt.

“Ah, fudge,” Bokuto says, looking down on the big wet patch now speckled over the side of his uniform. Kanae continues without a care in the world, looking straight at Akaashi and then straight through him like he’s not even worth her (valuable, two-year-old) time.  _ Fudge?  _ Akaashi thinks, panicking as she glares at him harder, looking very put-upon to the point where he wonders if he’s somehow wronged her personally.  _ Fudge?  _

“I’m gonna have to wash this when we get home,” Bokuto continues. Then his face lights up, and it’s not the  _ bad idea  _ expression (there’s more smiling then, and often more Kuroo too) so Akaashi decides right then and there that he’s just going to let this one happen, especially because most of Bokuto’s ideas are pretty good as long as they don’t involve making popcorn at two in the morning with all the lights on while Akaashi’s mother is trying to sleep. “Whaddya think, Kanae, Kanae? You wanna help me do laundry?”

That gets her attention. She tears her wide-eyed, terrifying gaze from Akaashi to look up at Bokuto instead, visibly thrilled and making loud squeaking noises, and Akaashi doesn’t know what’s going on but he’s never in his life been so glad to learn that he is less interesting than laundry. 

“Yeah!” Kanae cheers, battering her hand against Bokuto’s side, pigtails bouncing and shoes flashing pink-white-pink-white as she stomps several times in quick succession, each stamp more forceful than the last. “Laundry! Laundry!”

“She likes the noise the washing machine makes,” Bokuto says to Akaashi as Kanae delves into an odd little chant that alternates between _laundry_ and _shoes_ and _Kou-ta-rou_ depending on what she’s seeing at any given moment. “So we’re gonna go home and then we’re gonna do laundry with _Keiji,_ yeah Kanae? Do you wanna do _laundry_ with _Keiji_?”

Is he being roped into doing household chores? Was that Bokuto’s master plan all along? If so, good on him. Akaashi never saw it coming. 

“Yeah!” Kanae cheers and _wait, wait,_ she sounds _happy,_ wait, wait, is that all it took? He doesn’t know how to talk to kids, is that _really_ all it takes? “Keiji! Laundry! Ma-chine!”

Apparently.

“Heck yeah!” Bokuto whoops, throwing his arms as high in the air as they can go when he’s holding two bags and that  _ unicorn _ , which is flopping around half-dead and looking like the spitting image of Akaashi because of it. “What sound does the washing machine make?”

“Thump!” Kanae shrieks. She let go of Bokuto in favor of turning a few clumsy circles on the pavement, flapping her arms and gurgle-giggling in glee. “THUMP!” 

“THUMP!” Bokuto echoes. He is not quiet. They are stared at by adults, by children, by the one bored teenager being dragged along behind two adults and a child. Akaashi ignores him and instead devotes himself to a brief contemplation on the merits of nonexistence.

“Keiji!” Bokuto calls. His eyes are bright and he’s getting excited, bouncing on the balls of his feet and chest puffing out with the pride of having singlehandedly turned the tide of this whole mess. “Keiji! What sound does a washing machine make?”

Kanae stops spinning. “Keiji, Keiji,” she says. Her pigtails are coming undone, and she’s still laughing. 

“Tell him Kanae. Tell him about the washing machine,” Bokuto encourages, tapping at her shoulder. His hand is the length of her whole entire forearm. She grins up at him, sneakers flashing overtime from all of the spinning and stomping and jumping that she’s been doing. 

“Thump,” she says solemnly. She turns to Akaashi. “Thump. Washing machine  _ thumps. _ ”

This is all said with the gravity of someone much, much older than herself, all soft and clear and weirdly encouraging. And as there’s nothing else that he could do with that- and he can’t exactly  _ waste  _ Bokuto’s hasty but effective plan- Akaashi steels himself and makes eye-contact and says: “Thump.”

“A little more _ feeling _ than that!” Bokuto cheers. He’s using his captain voice now, the one that’s more stomach and bravado than actual voice, and Akaashi likes the captain voice and he  _ really  _ likes Bokuto and he figures that when they’re inevitably yelled at by the daycare workers or an irritated parent, he’ll just blame his lapse in judgement on that. 

“Thump,” he says louder. Kanae squeals in excitement, clapping her hands together, and the high of a positive reaction mixed with validation sends the last of his common sense racing off down the road, right down past the immaculate row of trees. 

“Thump!” she squeaks. “Keiji! Say thump!”

“Thump,” Keiji says, even louder time, with more  _ feeling _ , and it’s just as mortifying as you might expect but both Kanae and Bokuto cheer, so he guesses that he can manage for now.

“Again!”

“Thump.”

“Again!”

“Thump,” he says again, but by now it’s more of a shout, and Kanae’s yelping and giggling and Bokuto’s taken on a visceral, frantic excitement that makes him look like he’s vibrating straight off of the sidewalk.

“AGAIN!” he bellows. 

“Thump,” Akaashi says.

“Thump!” Kanae says.

“THUMP,” Bokuto says. 

“THUMP!” they say, all three of them at once, and it’s loud like a herd of elephants or a siren or the public pool that Akaashi avoids because it’s _loud,_ and suddenly he’s glad that his day before this wasn’t really that loud at all because otherwise he’d probably be well on his way to completely checking out by now. He can see what Bokuto means about his family- he takes the noise that they’re making, just Kanae and Bokuto and himself alone, and he multiplies that by two, three, four more siblings and yes he can see how things in the Bokuto household might get _loud._ But right now at least he doesn’t feel half as bad as he thought he would; instead he feels light, like standing here and shouting nonsense in the middle of a public place is exactly what he needed to let go of some of that stress that likes to cling to his back. Unconventional sure, but Akaashi’s never really been one for convention anyways. Things are much less boring without it.

“THUMP,” he says one last time, because if he’s taking a stand against convention he may as well do it right.

“ _ SHHHHH _ ,” a woman passing by them hisses. The glare that she shoots next is downright venomous, and immediately all three of them fall silent (even Kanae, who is puffing out her cheeks and pointedly looking off to the side) as the woman passes them by with scoff and disappears into the daycare, nails clicking against the doorknob and pristine hair settled stiff around her ears.

“Whoops,” Kanae whispers, eyes on the door as it swings shut. Her hand is back in her mouth and she looks worried, pulling her eyebrows together and clinging to Bokuto’s leg.

“That’s right buddy,” Bokuto says, ruffling her hair. “Whoops.”

And then he looks at Akaashi, and Akaashi looks back and then they both look at Kanae and Kanae is already off and distracted by her unicorn, which she tugs at until it slips from beneath Bokuto’s arm. She holds it tight to her chest and sneezes once, rubbing her hand over the back of her nose. “Ewww,” she groans. “Laundry.”

“Yeah, Kanae,” Bokuto says, and he’s  _ laughing  _ again, but this time it seems to be contagious or something, because Akaashi feels the corners of his mouth quirking up against his will. This whole thing is  _ ridiculous-  _ the light-up shoes and the laundry, the angry lady and his own worry, and everything must  _ really  _ be getting to him because now he’s laughing too. Bokuto pats Kanae on the head and looks at Akaashi from the corner of his eye, very self-satisfied and very deserving of it, as much as Akaashi would like to say otherwise. “We’re gonna do laundry, and we’re gonna do it soon because we were supposed to be halfway home like, five minutes ago. So, you ready?”

“Ready!” Kanae repeats. She sounds happy; Akaashi wishes that he could bounce back from abject embarrassment that quickly. “Keiji? Ready?”

“Keiji’s ready too,” Akaashi says, still half-stuck in his contemplation right up until he’s hit with what he’s said, whereupon he decides  _ on the spot _ that even  _ with  _ all the scary angry ladies, he’s been having too good a five minutes to agonize about the weird lapse in his speech patterns. That can be another problem for future Akaashi, who is going to be very tired by the end of all this.

“And so is Koutarou,” Bokuto says, straight-faced. Akaashi glares at him and he just smiles back, beatific and innocent and looking like he’s never done anything wrong in his life. Akaashi would disagree, but he doesn’t have time to say so because from there they end up in an odd little chain as Kanae insists on holding Akaashi’s hand (apparently they’ve bonded now. Akaashi would die for her) and then  _ Bokuto _ insists on holding his other hand, and from there they have to figure out how to maneuver along the sidewalk without jostling each other so much that Kanae drops her unicorn or Bokuto loses his grip on one of the bags that he still has piled up onto his back. They figure it out though, and by the time they’ve turned the corner Kanae is singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Bokuto’s trying to harmonize, and nobody is dropping anything at all. 

“See?” Bokuto says when they’ve reached the end of their song for the second time and Kanae has made the very brave and bold jump to London Bridge instead. “Was that so bad?” 

Akaashi considers him for a moment. Really considers him, the expectant grin and the one shoulder angled slightly in front of the other like a stage magician, the hair sticking straight up and the slobber-covered uniform jacket. Akaashi considers him, and then he stomps on his foot. Not enough to hurt _,_ not really, but enough to get his point across. 

“Thump,” he says. 

And Bokuto laughs. And Kanae giggles- because as Akaashi’s learned, Kanae picks up on the mannerisms of other people and throws them right back in their face with all the enthusiasm of a two-year old still trying to figure this whole  _ person  _ thing out- and then because he’s still riding the high from that  _ stupid, stupid,  _ stunt they pulled back there, Akaashi laughs too. And they laugh and they walk and they laugh some more, right up until they reach the Bokuto household and Bokuto realizes that he left his house keys on top of Kanae’s cubby at the daycare, at which point Akaashi thinks he may never find anything funny again, and from the look on Kanae’s face and the way that she clings to him and glares at Bokuto, she agrees.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed!! I love hearing from you guys!!
> 
> My favorite part of this is when Bokuto uses both dude and babe as terms of endearment one right after the other. I think that’s gonna be the height of my characterization of him and you know what? I’m alright with that


End file.
